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The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was located in northern Ukraine. The plant produced thousands of megawatts of electricity. The plant was officially built, and running in 1977.

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The plant had six different reactors. The workers were told to test the backup cooling system in reactor four.This reactor is built like a steam engine. Inside uranium fuel rods produce heat and turns water into steam. This drives the reactors to produce energy. control rods were placed in crucial positions to make sure the water was kept cold. These were removed unknowingly. causing the water to be too hot and an explosion occured.

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The radioactive materials had an immediate effect on living things. It highly increased pollution and wiped out almost all natural resources. Animals slowly died and all plants turned brown. More than 200,000 thousand kilo meters were contaminated. After the accident, radioactive materials were in lawns, parks, roads, and roofs were contaminated by acid rain. The milk produced from goats and cows was severely affected and milk prices went up in this part of the world.

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Many animals were negatively affected by the immense amount of radiation released into the environment. Some died, while some were left with terrible deformities.

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The explosion caused eight tons of radioactive debris to spill. 115,000 people were evacuated out of a 30 killometer zone. All 115,000 lost there homes and most didn't have time to grab there belongings. The fire caused lasted 15 days and they were never allowed back. 31 people were killed many more had serious effects. The Ukraine government built a concrete structure to keep the radioactive debris in. The structure was filled with 200 tons of radioactive fuel.

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See what the abandoned city of Chernobyl looks like 30 years later.

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This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode. Several hundred staff and firefighters then tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world in the worst-ever civil nuclear disaster. More than 50 reactor and emergency workers were killed at the time. Authorities evacuated 120,000 people from the area, including 43,000 from the city of Pripyat. Reuters reports that a huge recently-completed enclosure called the New Safe Confinement-the world's largest land-based moving structure-will be "pulled slowly over the site later this year to create a steel-clad casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely." Gathered below are recent images of the ongoing cleanup work and the ghost towns being reclaimed by nature within the 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometers) exclusion zone in Ukraine.

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Still Cleaning Up: 30 Years After the Chernobyl Disaster

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This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode. Several hundred staff and firefighters then tackled a blaze that burned for 10 days and sent a plume of radiation around the world in the worst-ever civil nuclear disaster.